Saturday 11th October 2008

Felt ok after another stormy night but decided not to chance breakfast and just had my heart meds in case the malaria capsule was affecting my stomach (I know you shouldn’t do that but I had it later). I lay on my bunk to make sure my stomach wasn’t going to feel too awful for riding the bike and thus missed a noisy passengers’ deputation to the captain. Apparently it was quite entertaining. Around mid morning the ship picked up speed and made its way into port in a totally orderly manner. The drivers were called to the vehicle deck and we prepared to depart. I was astonished to find that not only was my bike undamaged but that it had been buffered and tied against the pipe absolutely perfectly, far better than any strap over the seat. So, that was the trip over? No, this was now Morocco and a crowd of passengers held a protest on the unloading ramp, demanding refunds on their tickets. As they were blocking in the last vehicle to be loaded, a huge barge, they probably thought they were in a position of strength. Words turned to shouts, shouts turned to shoves and then there were three people on the ground. And so it went on. I got speaking again to the ship’s engineer who told me the passengers hadn’t a hope. Apparently this ship was only doing this one run and was then going to Greece for a month of repairs, so they weren’t in a hurry anywhere. He also mentioned that he was from Georgia but that one of his favourite destinations was Ireland because of the Guinness and the friendly welcome. He obviously thought I was mad to leave Ireland to come to all this shouting. I got chatting to two of the non-shouting passengers who told me that they have been using this route for years with no problems with the normal ferry, the Marrakesh, and that they think this ship was just too big for the port in bad weather. Possibly it was put on to bring the barge over?
Suddenly a military style ambulance arrived with its siren wailing and there was a lot of police activity. Just like old times, I expected to see an RUC DMSU arrive at any minute. With no obvious settlement, the deadlock ended and we all returned to our vehicles while the barge was unloaded.
That would be the barge that had been reversed in with great force and jammed tight against the supports of the next deck.
In due course we did eventually get off the ship only to move to the chaos that is Nador customs. Tim Cullin of Horizons Unlimited has warned against using Nador because the customs resemble a scene from Mad Max. Tim, you’re wrong, this IS Mad Max. I swear I saw Tina Turner lead her mechanised legion straight down the centre lane. The customs officers (all of them) looked at my internet downloaded import form (that’s downloaded from their website), had obviously never seen one before and just stamped everything in sight and I was through.
In my now hot and thoroughly exhausted state I was very grateful that Najim had waited with his car to lead me to a cheap hotel near his parents’ apartment and to help me secure my bike in their garage. Noaam insisted we had to go out so off we went for dinner and some advanced tuition in woman watching from pavement cafes for the rest of the evening. On balance, I think this was all a bit tougher than getting into Wales but, once again, at least I hadn’t broken my glasses.